CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 12/7/2011

In this Sunday's New York Times Dana Jennings writes, "THE images simmering in the French photographer Cédric Delsaux’s Dark Lens series are an unsettling confluence of hyper-real cityscapes, a postpostmodern sense of humor... and characters from Star Wars."

"There’s Darth Vader, in his dark and terrible glory, stalking Paris and Dubai; Jabba the Hutt lurking in some Parisian ruin; and the Millennium Falcon rocked by a sandstorm above Dubai. One of the many questions raised by these bewitching photographs is this: George Lucas’s science-fiction fantasy long ago colonized our cultural imagination, so why not our actual physical world?

But Mr. Delsaux swears that Dark Lens wasn’t born to pay homage to R2-D2, Luke Skywalker and their buddies. 'My first intention wasn’t to produce a series on Star Wars, but to photograph locations that are the makeup of our modernity: parking lots, peripheral zones, wastelands, forgotten places, of both beauty and ugliness, common and mad,' Mr. Delsaux said by e-mail. 'Nevertheless, something was missing, my images were flat, déjà vu. I then had the idea to add these sci-fi characters, with the immediate effect of making my primal sensations stand out, the fantastical nature of the characters invading the whole frame, both universes harmoniously coming together.'